Changing Face of Religious Life

By Sister Mary Ann Walsh

A poster on the wall beside my desk reminds me to pray for vocations. It includes pictures of 28 women on the path to becoming Sisters of Mercy of the Americas. In fact, there are 30 such women in our community, but two didn’t want their pics on the poster. Thus goes the new age of freedom in formation.

However, the right to say you won’t be included in a community poster is not the only thing new. What also stands out is how these women reflect a changing church. Only 15 of those pictured come from the United States. The others come from the Philippines, Guyana, Jamaica and Peru. Older Mercies who welcome the new members are predominantly white and hail from families with roots in such countries as Ireland, Italy and Germany. Research from the Georgetown University-based Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) finds a similar picture nationwide. Today, more than a fifth of the people in formation in the United States are Hispanic; one in eight, Asian American; and one in 15, African American.

It’s hard to judge ages from pictures but it appears that most of these women are older than I was when I joined the Sisters of Mercy at 17. Now we don’t even accept women for formation until they are in their twenties. Four of the current group are in their twenties, five in their thirties, two in their forties and one, who was in another community before coming to us, is in her fifties.

Our younger religious have more education that I did starting out. Many enter with professional credentials, among them nurses, teachers and lawyers. Most of the women now in our formation process in the U.S. have their bachelor’s degrees, and some have master’s. There are two teachers, two in finance and three in nursing. One is a lawyer and one’s getting her master’s degree in theology. Another is a computer expert and one served in the U.S. Coast Guard. There’s a chef too.

Despite these differences, their vocation quest holds many similarities, no matter the age. They want a special relationship with Jesus. They pray. They enjoy other Sisters of Mercy of all ages. They also are romantic enough to follow Someone unseen Who beckons with a soul-searing call. They look about them and see needs to be met and want to do their part to make a better world.

Father James Martin, SJ: Thank You!

By Father James Martin, SJ


It’s hard to sum up in a few words what men and women religious have meant to me.  But let me use two words that I’ll bet you’d use too: Thank you.

Thank you to Sister Janice, a Religious of Jesus and Mary, who was my church history professor during graduate theology studies, and who has become a close friend to my whole family. Ten years ago, when my father was first diagnosed with cancer, Janice was one of the first people to telephone him to offer support and prayers. And in the last week of his life, she took a train from Boston to Philadelphia (that’s about a six-hour trip) to visit him while he was in the hospital. Like all Catholic sisters, Janice has taken a vow of poverty and lives on a limited budget. So to visit my father, she took the cheapest train she could find and stayed at a local convent. The next day she got back on the train and returned to Boston, another six-hour trip. I don’t think I can ever thank her enough.

Thank you to Sister Maddy, a Sister of St. Joseph I met when I was working in East Africa and she was helping, with two other Sisters of St. Joseph, to run a girls school in a remote village in Tanzania (That meant no water, no electricity, no phones.) Today, she is a retreat director at a Jesuit retreat house, beloved by people from all over the country, whom she helps with wise spiritual guidance. During one retreat, she led me through a particularly tough time, balancing our friendship and her professional role as a director. Lately we’ve directed weekend retreats together, and I always learn something new about God when I listen to her. I can never thank her enough either.

 Thank you to Sisters Claire and Eileen, Maryknoll Sisters who lived across the street from our Jesuit community in Nairobi, while I was there for two years. Both had spent years working in the most difficult settings imaginable in East Africa, and these two elderly sisters provided me with a model of indomitable religious fervor. Often, when I was homesick, I would pop by their house for a cup of tea and some cheering up. “Oh you’ll be fine!” both would say. And they were right.

Thank you, too, to all the Jesuits who have helped me in life, and who are too numerous to name. But I’ll give you a few! Thanks to David, my first-ever spiritual director, who helped me discover what it means to be loved by God as you are. Thanks to John, one of the true saints I have known, who showed me what it means to live with an open heart, a generous spirit and a love of simplicity. Thanks to George, who helped to support my vocation during a difficult time with his patient spiritual counsel. 

I’m sure you’d like to say “Thank you” to the men and women religious who have made a difference in your life. And I’ll bet you’ve probably dropped them a line or told them in person. But did you know that their religious orders are facing a severe financial crisis, and are finding it hard to care for these great men and women in their declining years?  

Men and women religious – particularly the women - typically worked for very little (sometimes a literal pittance); they lived exceedingly simply; and many of their communities were not able to save much at all, thanks to these historically low salaries. Also, there are fewer young people entering religious life, which means that fewer religious men and women are earning salaries, which means that the older religious are having a difficult time making ends meet.

This is where you can really say thank you! Why not give to the Retirement Fund for Religious? I know they would appreciate it. I’ll bet God would, too. 

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James Martin, SJ, is a Jesuit priest, contributing editor to America and author of many books, including My Life with the Saints, The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything and Between Heaven and Mirth: Why Joy, Humor and Laughter are at the Heart of the Spiritual Life.

Editor's Note: To contribute to the Retirement Fund for Religious, visit: http://www.usccb.org/about/national-religious-retirement-office/ or www.retiredreligious.org

John Fialka: Seeing Around Corners

By John Fialka

Americans today who weren’t around during the 1950s and 1960s might not recognize the world many older Catholics grew up in. Many of the oldsters, like me, were educated in the parochial school system. At its peak, in 1968, it enrolled one out of every ten American students.

It was the nation’s largest private school system, largely built and run by orders of Catholic sisters. There were 179,974 of them in 1968, an all-time high. Most of them were teachers. Many of the rest were running the largest nonprofit hospital system in the country, a system that nuns largely organized, financed and built.

Basically, what these women did – along with orders of brothers also involved in this work – was to educate some of America’s poorest and least prepared immigrants. Many Irish, Italians and Eastern Europeans were launched into America’s middle class by this system, no mean feat in a nation where arriving Catholics often encountered prejudice.

So what did the nuns mean to young Catholics? In my school, in a working class neighborhood of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, we took them for granted. They were always there, planted in front of our classrooms. They dressed us up in white cassocks on May Day for a candle-lit procession to sing Latin hymns in praise of the Blessed Virgin.

A close observer, however, would see little boys pouring hot candle wax on each other’s arms. These experiments ended with nuns flitting in and out of our ranks to pull selected ears. The proximity of their convent next to the school and their isolation from the rest of the business of the community made them close observers.

In that convent retired nuns who had taught our parents were advising our teachers. When we were little, we were sure our teachers could see around corners. In a way, they could.

By high school it was not cool to say you admired nuns, though many of us secretly did. Some of the girls might still say that, but for boys it was better to smoke cigarettes, drink beer, shoot pool and make these women into cartoons. They had succeeded by whacking students with rulers, we would say. Much closer to the truth was that these women loved us and sacrificed much to make sure that we used the quiet of the Catholic classroom to learn.

From that class half of us went on to finish college. Most of us married for life, raised strong families and moved to jobs all over the U.S. and overseas. So we weren’t surprised in the 1980s when sociologists and educators discovered the “Catholic School effect.” They found that once the statistical bias of having high income-earning parents was removed, Catholic high school sophomores were the nation’s top academic performers.

They also found the achievement gap between white students and minorities in Catholic schools was narrower than in public schools. More homework got done and there were fewer absences and dropouts.

Most of the women who performed this miracle are gone or in retirement. A steep drop in the recruitment of younger sisters (who cared for the older ones), insufficient retirement funds, soaring health costs and declining income of religious orders has created an ominous financial gap. Since 1988 the Bishops’ annual collection for the Retirement Fund for Religious has raised $671 million to help retired religious.

For each of the last three years the cost of caring for elderly religious has been over $1 billion. If the nuns were still teaching us, they would say sit up straight, keep your feet under your desk and do the math. That would help Catholics see around this corner. We need to give more to make sure our religious retire with what they struggled so hard to give us: a sense of dignity.

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John Fialka, as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, broke the story of the retirement shortfall for religious orders on May 19, 1986. He later wrote “Sisters; Catholic nuns and the Making of America” (St. Martin’s Press, 2004). After retiring from the Journal in 2008, he became editor of ClimateWire, an internet newsletter about climate change.

Editor's Note: To contribute to the Retirement Fund for Religious, visit: http://www.usccb.org/about/national-religious-retirement-office/ or www.retiredreligious.org

Sister Mary Ann Walsh: The Nuns Who Form Us

 

By Sister Mary Ann Walsh

 

We’re formed by those around us. As the National Religious Retirement Collection comes up (the collection is December 8-9), I cannot help but think of the many religious who formed me.

Sister Patricia Newell was my fifth grade teacher and advised us students to name our guardian angels. I named mine Michael, as in Michael the Archangel. I’ve called on his protection in large and small ways, asking everything from “Wake me up on time” to “Get me out of here alive” (in that case, a reporting assignment in Beirut.)

Sister Veronica Joyce, my eighth grade teacher saw I finished my work quickly. She also believed that idle hands are the devil’s workshop. So she assigned me to write the class play, class history, class song, class prophecy and whatever else she could think of. She even let me work in my own space, alone in the little used nurse’s office. Years later when I told the story, a fellow nun said, “Wow. She isolated you and got you to think you had your own office!” I still love writing.

Sister Mary Carmel Gaynor taught journalism to a lot of us who went into that field. She hammered “clarity and accuracy” at us over and over again. That guiding principle for the communications business stood as good advice not just for the news business but for life.

Sister Katherine Hanley, an English professor at the College of St .Rose, treated students as if everything they said was deathless prose. It drew us out of ourselves. It was empowering. When I taught, I tried to do the same.

It’s dangerous to name names and if I miss someone, I apologize. Two years ago I faced breast cancer and nuns surrounded me. Amy Hoey, Janice Bader, Linda Werthman, Peg Sullivan, Kay Graber, Jean McGinty, Katie Mindling, Patti Donlin and many more helped run my life when I couldn’t run my own. They prayed with and for me, cooked meals, filled out insurance forms, helped me make wise decisions, accompanied me to appointments and offered encouragement I never dreamed I’d need. Mary Ellen Dougherty, who paused leaving my hospital bedside one night remarked, “God wants you to get better.” I was scared and that never occurred to me, but when she said it, I knew it was true.

Sister Sharon Euart made a quilt with squares gathered from supportive friends and today it hangs in my bedroom. It reminds me that God’s love flows freely to us through many people not because we’ve earned it but because God is goodness itself.

Sister Lilyan Fraher, who this summer as director of my annual retreat, suggested that as I fall off to sleep I ask, “Where did I see the face of God today?” It’s a great way to enter into the night.

None of the above thought what they were doing was extraordinary because such giving is an ordinary part of their lives. That’s how it is with religious sisters, brothers and priests. God’s goodness courses through them; their lives are wordless sermons, and I haven’t even told (or even know) the half of it.

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Sister Mary Ann Walsh is a member of the Northeast Community of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas and Director of Media Relations for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Editor's Note: To contribute to the Retirement Fund for Religious, visit: http://www.usccb.org/about/national-religious-retirement-office/ or www.retiredreligious.org

Archbishop Flynn: From Orphan to Archbishop

By Archbishop Harry Flynn
 
Throughout the United States on the weekend of December 8-9 the Church will take up the 25th annual collection for the retired religious. I have a special fondness for all religious because I deeply appreciate the sacrifices that they have made in order to serve God’s people in our country. 

My father died when I was six years of age. My older brothers were away in the military service in September of 1945. I was home alone with my widowed mother. On the day after Labor Day I woke up to begin my seventh grade at St. Columba School in Schenectady, New York. That morning is very clear in my memory. I found my mother dead. What was supposed to have been the day beginning seventh grade was a day in which funeral preparations were made for my mother’s burial. I will never forget that painful experience.  However, when I went back to school on the following Monday there was a beautiful Sister of St. Joseph, Sister William Edmund. Her family name was Mary Rose Eagan. She received me warmly and shepherded me through that 7th grade. I often wonder how I would have made it without her tender caring. She demonstrated this in so many ways in asking me question about what I did after school, helping me with various projects and keeping me occupied as well as she could. She was and is in my memory of gratitude to this very day.

Then, as I went on to high school the superior of that school was a Mother Maris Stella. I remember she was principal of the high school and the grade school and superior of the convent with about 16 nuns in it. On a Friday afternoon when I would be leaving school she would call me and tell me to be at the convent on the following morning at nine. She wanted me to have a New York State Regent’s Diploma when I graduated from high school and she spent her Saturday mornings, in which she could have been involved in many other pursuits, going over former Regent’s examinations so that I would be acquainted with them when I would face the examination the following June. She was outstanding in her generosity and I think of that generosity to this day. 

I’ve always been fond of religious brothers and sisters. I would be less than honest if I did not say that my experience was solely with the sisters and my heart wells up with gratitude when I think of them. I have observed the Church in the United States. It is a healthy Church. Our U.S. Church has 77 million people. I have thought, and thought often, as to where the Church would be if it were not for the women religious and the men religious. The women religious taught in schools all over our country. They ministered in hospitals. They perform the works of charity. They were the face of the Church in so many different areas as were the brothers. Where would the Church be in the United States without them? 

Now we have the opportunity to help them in their need. They do not have the numbers coming into the religious life to support the elderly who need care. They worked for small stipends and any other surplus income was reinvested in community ministries. As a result they need our help now and they need it badly. It is my hope and prayer that the American Catholics will show their gratitude to these valiant Religious by being generous in this great collection.  

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Archbishop Harry J. Flynn is archbishop emeritus of Saint Paul and Minneapolis.  

Editor's Note: To contribute to the Retirement Fund for Religious, visit: http://www.usccb.org/about/national-religious-retirement-office/